The balanced scorecard, one of the most significant management philosophies of the last quarter-century, confronts that stratagem head-on with a simple core concept: Stop trying to manage your organization by financial measures alone. Why? Because financial measures always look backward. They tell you what happened last month, last quarter or last year, but they say little about what will happen in the future.

Anyone with any amount of business experience knows that financial success in the short term doesn’t always translate into long-term success, and that’s the underlying wisdom of the balanced scorecard.